


Saints of all Saints

by rants_skellington



Category: Saints Row
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3759484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Experimental mood piece focusing on the concept that Johnny's love for the Boss is directly linked to the Boss being the embodiment of the Saints. Less boring than that sounds?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saints of all Saints

**Author's Note:**

> Also on my tumblr [here.](http://steve-leopard.tumblr.com/post/116585651261/saint-of-all-saints-oneshot) Reblogs would be hugely appreciated!

He was bleeding through his T-shirt. The bullet had ripped right through the skin underneath, travelled right through his flesh and left a burning hole behind. He had torn off his button-up and balled it up, pressing it into the wound in his waist. The blood was staining the purple, seeping through and making the shiny cloth dark and wet and heavy. He was gripping it so tightly his fist was starting to ache, his free arm around the Boss’ shoulders. They were dragging him down the stairs, every movement of his left leg sending pain shooting through his whole body, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. Blood was starting to trickle down his side.

The Boss slammed into the door of their basement apartment, busting right through the lock. They half-carried Johnny to the mattress in the corner of the room, unceremoniously dropping him onto it before they turned to some of the cardboard boxes they had piled up around the room. They tore one open as they dug through it, tossing stuff aside in their desperation to find the medical supplies. Cans and bottles hit the floor, boxes of food that were long past their date, a bowl that smashed against the back wall, the shards of porcelain mixing with the other garbage accumulating in the room.

The Boss’ crib was a dump. Water was dripping from one of the pipes above Johnny's head as he sat on the- visibly dirty- mattress. The walls were starkly bare concrete blocks, howling water pipes ran around the whole room, he could hear sound from the street outside as loudly as if the cars were in the room. There was no kitchen, just a rusted trough-like sink set into the wall. It reminded him of the loft Boss had lived in Saint’s Row, back when they’d first joined the Saints, except this place was a thousand times worse. Under the veil of nostalgia, those days existed in an idealised glow in his mind. Thinking about them left a pain in his chest that was so much more potent than the old ache in his knee.

Five years, five fucking years he had waited. Five years of being alone. Years of watching the news every night with his entire body tensed, internally pleading, watching the newsreader’s lips and begging her to say it, to tell him the Boss had woken up. Years of wearing purple every day even when people started wearing yellow, or red, or green. Or orange, if you were Dex. Blue if you were Troy. Blue and Orange for traitors. Years of watching Ultor construction tear down the neighbourhood he had grown up in and fill it up with people who could have bought his childhood home and all the houses around it with small change. Five years of being sick from anger. No one else had understood. But the Boss was back now.

The Boss was here. Even thinking it, watching them fumble bandages out of plastic shell casing, lifted the burden of rage from his shoulders. They understood. They understood the Saints better than anyone, maybe even better than him. They loved the Saints.

He’d visited them when he was in prison. He hadn’t really believed that they were in a coma. It had been on the news, after the explosion, an unidentified man had escaped from the wreckage of the Alderman’s boat. Believed to be affiliated with the Third Street Saints. In a coma in Stilwater Penitentiary hospital wing. That, Johnny had decided, could not be true. Not Playa. A coma? Nothing could take down Playa! Not his best friend. He had told Aisha when they’d seen the news report, looking at her incredulously. Can You Believe This? He’d said. It Can’t Be True. And she’d smiled at him so sadly, and her eyes had welled up a little and he hadn’t really understood why. It wasn’t true, after all. Playa was a Saint, Playa was the Saint, and nothing could possibly ever stop the Third Street Saints.

Julius had told them later that day the gang was over. The Saints Are Finished. He hadn’t believed that either. It was a joke, right? It was a joke? But everyone else was buying into it, for some reason, everyone else was slipping away. He was the only one left. Left in his bewilderment and his fear. They couldn’t stop now! They had to go and find the person who’d tried to kill Playa! Playa Is Gone Johnny. The Saints Are Finished And Playa Is Gone.

The Saints Are Finished And Playa Is Gone.

Well they weren’t fucking gone now. They tugged his T-shirt up, revealing his wound to the cold air of the basement, cleaning blood away from his skin with a sheet because they didn’t have any towels. It was rough and it stung but he didn’t care. They wouldn’t stop talking about the fucking towels. How could they not own any towels? Not even a cloth? He wasn’t even listening to them, because concentrating on two things at once was too hard and his head was pounding. He’d adjusted to them talking pretty quickly, mostly because they never shut up. It made a nice change from the wall of silence they had been. He liked them talking. He liked them making jokes and speeches, howling battle cries with their gun in their hand.

When he’d been arrested he’d decided he was going to see them. He fully expected them to be up and walking around when he got there, and just no one had told him. And then the two of them would break out, and they’d take back the city. Put things back the way it should be.

But when he got there they weren’t. And when he’d seen them lying in a hospital bed, wires and tubes keeping them alive, it had been like taking a punch straight to the gut. He’d never seen them looking so weak. If they weren’t over six foot three he’d have been tempted to say they’d looked small, like having the power stripped away from them made them fade away as a person.

Their skin was still shiny with burn scars in places, mottled strands running up their arms in streaks, barely visible unless they caught the light. The surgeons had done good work patching them together, although God knows why they’d bothered, if everyone thought they were just going to get shipped off to the chair as soon as they woke up. It’s Worst On My Back, they’d told him. My Freckles Are All Gone. If he hadn’t known better he’d have said they’d looked upset about it. But that was ridiculous.

Boss’ hands were gentle on his wound as they finished washing away the blood, dabbing on alcohol in lieu of disinfectant. Now that- that hurt like a bitch. But Johnny gritted his teeth and bore it. He’d seen Boss throttle a man to death with their bare hands. He’d seen them beat someone to death with a baseball bat. Slaughter a hundred Vice Kings. But on his skin their fingers brushed by so coolly he could barely feel it. They had such restraint, when they wanted it. Out came the needle and thread. The bite of the needle was not so kind.

This whole thing felt like some kind of absurdist daydream. He’d had this exact dream when he was in jail- well, in his fantasies he wasn’t bleeding out on the Boss’ filthy mattress because in his fantasies he was an immortal killing machine- that they’d come back to him, the two of them would fight side-by-side again. When they’d gone, the Saints had died, and now they were back, the Saints had been reborn. Like they were the spirit of the gang, an irremovable part of it, the beating heart of it all—

The Saint Of All Saints he murmured, barely audible.

What? Boss asked, looking up at him from their small, careful stitches. He shook his head, letting them finish up, carefully tape a bandage over their work. They walked to the sink to rinse the blood from their hands. The lifeblood of the Saints walked across the room and washed his blood away.

The Saints Are Back. Didn’t You Hear The Saints Are Back.

He’d said it so many times as they gunned down Ronin, and Samedi, and Brotherhood, and the police, his battle cry as they waged war. The Saints are back. The Saints are back. Tell the whole fucking world that the Saints are back. He said it out loud because the line was playing on repeat in his head like the constant scream of his own blood pounding in his ears. He could believe it, he could so easily believe the Saints’ return because he had never believed they had gone away.

Johnny loved the Saints. He’d always loved the Saints. Maybe he wasn’t the planner, the strategist, maybe he was just another gun, but no one could match his loyalty. No one could ever love like Johnny Gat loved. No one could love this much.

The Boss knelt down next to him and gave him a glass of water. He hadn’t realised how dry his throat was until he took a drink. He still felt a little light-headed. There was concern in Boss’ eyes that he barely recognised. It was unlike them. As Playa they’d been so expressionless, so unmoved by everything around them. As Boss they were more human, somehow. Their personhood felt suddenly overwhelming. It was hard for him to accept the two different forms in his mind. The burning, fierce, terrible Saint of all Saints that towered above all else, and his friend, his best friend, his friend who patched his wounds and laughed at his jokes and looked at him with love in their eyes. He couldn’t believe they could co-exist.

And he was filled then with love for them, as he was filled with love for the Saints. Because they were the Saints. His Saint. His Saint trapped in a small concrete cave.

Why Do You Live In This Shithole, Man. Do You Remember Price’s Mansion? Or The Lopez’s?

I Don’t Need A Mansion To Take Back The City. I Definitely Don’t Need Two. I Just Need My Crew.

They meant him. They needed him. Saint of all Saints, god of gunmen and gangsters. They needed him. His hand was on theirs. They had such cold hands. Like they were drenched through.

Johnny kissed the Boss. They were surprised, but they quickly leaned in, kissing him back, a hand reaching up to the back of his head to pull him in closer. They were clinging to him. He’d never considered the possibility they wanted this so badly. He didn’t know what he wanted, other than to be close to them.

When they both broke apart, they didn’t take their hands off his face, their eyes closed. When they opened their eyes they were confused, a strange lack of understanding and keen desperation in their face, but then they pulled him into another long kiss. It was interrupted quickly when they put a hand on his chest and his wound erupted with pain. He flinched back, hissing through his teeth. They apologised, embarrassed, guilty.

It’s Fine.

He laid back on the mattress and after a second they laid down by his side. His head was aching, his side was splitting, he wanted to pass out and sleep for weeks. His own bones were weighing him down, pinned to the mattress through the blood in his veins. The Boss twisted their head to the side, looked at him through thick eyelashes. They looked like they were on the precipice of saying something, but whatever it was, they decided against it.

They were violent, and unpredictable, they were a cold-blooded murderer who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. They had killed hundreds, and they would kill hundreds more. He held their hand. He could feel their pulse through palm, fluttering against his. Johnny Gat loved the Saints, and the Saint of all Saints loved him.


End file.
